Lidio Cipriani (1892–1962), the Photographs in His Popular Science Literature

Abstract

The case of Lidio Cipriani (1892–1962) is symptomatic of a time when sciences like anthropology and ethnology supported the fascist ideology and gave it scientific approval in a crucial political moment for Benito Mussolini’s regime (1930–1940), which enacted racist laws and institutionalized the establishment of racial segregation in the colonies as well as within the boundaries of the motherland. Over the past thirty years historiography has focused some attention on the issue, but in this contribution I would like to highlight a point that has only been mentioned in passing in studies dedicated to the Florentine anthropologist, namely the questions surrounding the use of his massive photographic corpus. Since the use of imagery to nourish a collective imagination had become crucial for the fascist regime, an analysis of these images and their circulation may allow us to better explore the interrelationship between a totalitarian political power, the social body impregnated with propaganda, and the physical anthropology practiced by Cipriani, who produced a colossal visual corpus that suited the fascist theoretical apparatus.